Actors who love poetry (and poets who love to perform) are invited to participate. The project will include abundant opportunities for growth and for performance in multiple small venues like galleries and cafés.

MET's first POETRY ONSTAGE presentation will beAn Evening of Poetry and Guitars

on the first weekend of March 2013.

This fully rehearsed project will celebrate the 20th anniversary of MET and the 80th birthday of its Artistic Director.Featured will be three guitarists, several actors and some of the word's most beloved poems.Proceeds will benefit the Gough Street Playhouse Building Fund.

To request participation information click on the CONTACT US button above.

Additional monthly poetry projects will alternate between open mike events and rehearsed presentations.

Once a Month Open MikeOpportunities for poets to read their own work and for actors and other readers to present selections from their favorite poets.Once a Month Featured PoetPresentations ranging from Homer, Sappho and Shakespeare to Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes, Pablo Neruda,Maya Angelou and a host of others.

Occasional voice and speech workshops will help participants ease into the challenges of speaking poetry.

Poetry Alive and Onstage – a rehearsal and performance workshopTraining, rehearsal and guaranteed workshop performances for actors, poets and interested beginners. Basic instruction in three hour weekend sessions. Includes priority audition opportunities for the for MET's Poetry Onstage Series.

Basic Voice and Speech for the ActorAn holistic approach using the Lessac method to train the entire voice and speech mechanism to respond naturally and with vibrant clarity to a full range of acting challenges. Students learn to relax the upper body and larynx, to meaningfully control the four basic variables of voice and speech (volume, pitch, rate and quality), and to clearly project vowels and consonants.

Workshops are tuition free for members of MET, Custom Made Theatre, and Trinity-Saint Peter's Church.

a new MET project for 2013 and beyond

for production in the fall of 2014

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOUby MOSS HART and GEORGE S. KAUFMAN

adapted from the depression era comedy withnew meaning for the 99% and the rest of them

Lewis Campbell, Founder and Artistic Director of Multi Ethnic Theater, will be a nonagenarian in about ten years. The following list of theater projects ends with a bucket list. He hopes to completea good portion of it and to add to the list as exciting new ideas emerge. He also hopes a few other theater lovers will come along for the ride.

Additional Projects Under Consideration(Lewis's Bucket List)

20th Century American Revivals with Current Political RamificationsPower: A Living Newspaperfrom the Federal Theatre Project, 1935-1939Flexible cast – Flexible stagingOne of the Federal Theatre Project's most popular productions, Power played on the double meaning of its title, dramatizing the story of the development of the electric utility industry as well as the struggle to control that technology. Another title in the series is One Third of a Nation: A Living Newspaper About Housing. Or several Living Newspaper scripts could be mined to form a production alarmingly relevant today. The educational value of this project would appeal to schools. Development of this project would work well with a workshop approach. Another approach would be to use a short Living Newspaper sampler as a context establishing opening act for a production of Clifford Odets’ Depression Era one-act Waiting for Lefty.The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullersWinner of the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award, this evocative, poetic drama explores the pains of youth and the meaning of family through the eyes of young Jasmine "Frankie" Adams.To Kill a Mockingbirdadapted by Christopher Sergel from the novel by Harper LeeCourtroom drama exploring racial bigotry and heroic understanding in the pre-civil rights era American South.Inherit the Windby Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. LeeA new bare stage approach using a cast of eight to cover thirty roles and the townspeople. This is a fictionalized re-telling of the famous Scopes trial of the early twentieth century. It is especially relevant today considering the current challenges to scientific thought by the religious right.

plus any play by August Wilson

International Plays With Political Bite

Take No Survivors by Gerard Bagardie West Coast Premier Translated by Arnold Slater2w, bare stage/one interior -- 90 minutes without intermissionParis. December, 2050. The Youth Brigades are facing Government troops at the barricades. A civil war is imminent. The President has agreed to meet the young revolutionary leader who demands to be given control of the Government. They are two ruthless, ambitious, and ideological women who confront each other through the night.Winner in 1999 of the Jean Anouilh Prize for Best New Play in France.English language premiere in 2006 at New York’s 59E59 theater. No other US productions.Brecht on Brechtarranged from the writings of Bertolt Brecht and Translated by George TaboriReader's Theatre with music -- 3 - 4 m, 3 - 4w -- Bare stage and stools (w/projections)The life and works of Bertolt Brecht provide a compelling revue that earned critical acclaim Off Broadway. Showcasing Brecht's youthful philosophical musings on such matters as book burning, ideology, advice to actors, and critics. Includes excerpts from such dramatic works as The Good Woman of Setzuan and The Jewish Wife as well as songs and poems.

Theater Classics

Macbethby William ShakespeareIn this production Pale Hecate and the witches would run the show as puppeteers from on high moving into the action and donning the garb of various smaller roles: messengers, servants and hired murderers. The cast would thus be smaller and the action streamlined.Twelfth Nightby William ShakespeareThis production would be set on a Mississippi River Boat, The Illyria. The Captain of the boat is Duke Orsino, and Lady Olivia, the woman he pines for, runs a saloon and theater on the lower deck. “If music be the food of love” refers to a banjo played by Feste, an actor in Olivia’s theater company.She Stoops to Conquer, or The Mistakes of a Nightby Oliver Goldsmith18th Century comedy3w, 5mThis play would work well in a cartoon-like Wild West setting with simple staging. A excellent holiday choice.The Trojan Womenby EuripidesSpecial staging set in a modern center for politically captured women. Features offstage sounds of modern warfare: helicopters landing, jeeps approaching and screeching to a stop, distant explosions. Period images rethought for modern staging. For example Hecuba to her daughter, the maddened Cassandra: “Give me your torch, you do not hold it well.” But Cassandra is actually brandishing a hand grenade from which she has just pulled the pin.An Enemy of the Peopleby Henrik IbsenDr. Stockman, by standing up for what he knows is right, becomes unpopular when the town discovers that his knowledge regarding health problems at the profitable local mineral baths poses an inconvenient truth which is likely to cause financial losses to the mercenary minded population.The Lower Depthsby Maxim GorkyModern adaptation of the Russian naturalistic drama. Scene: a hangout room in an urban flop house. This production would be set in a modern slum area with a bunch of familiar down and out characters from a wide variety of former stations in life.

Musical Theater Projects

Walt Kelly’s Songs of the Pogo World Premier Production3-4w, 4-5mThe text would be from the comic strip Pogo, with infectious music from the album Songs of the Pogo. The two have never been combined to form a musical. The material presents an exciting opportunity for a group-write, improvisational approach similar to Second City’s development of Story Theatre.Opera do Malandro by Chico Barque English Language Premier7-8w, 7-8mOpen staging with space for dancing.From Brazil, this is an energetic, samba driven retelling of The Three Penny Opera.Down in the Valley by Kurt Weill and librettist Arnold Sundgaard a one-act opera1w (soprano), 5 m (3 sung, 2 spoken) plus a chorus of townspeopleRunawaysby Elizabeth Swados Summer Youth Production7-10w, 8-11mSwados took her idea for a musical about running away "from home, from a boyfriend, from a predator,... from yourself" to Joseph Papp, who agreed to produce it. She looked for children to be in the musical in various places in New York City, such as a community center, and "little by little, we built a world where runaways came together, told their stories, and acted out the hardships they endured." Some in the cast were actual runaways. The show was done in a series of songs, monologues, scenes, poems, and dancesThe Me Nobody Knows Summer Youth Production a cast of 12 (ages 12 to 25).Tony-nominated and Obie Award-winning musical. Within the envelope of a single day, the show poetically examines the aspirations and fears of a multi-racial cast of young people. Inspired by actual writings of students in the New York City Public Schools, the stories are universal, and can be shared by and with all races.

Exclusively For the Chapel Space

A Shakespeare Valentine a February treat in 2014.This fully rehearsed project, will consist of fifty-three sonnets especially staged to create a “new play” about the joys and perils of

love. The play features a multi-generational cast of five couples and is done in such a way that each couple has a story to tell.

Mr. Shakespeare’s Magic MirrorThis is a training / performance vehicle in anticipation of later full-length Shakespeare challenges. It consists of an evening of scenes, “tragical, comical, historical,” and a few sonnets. Included is a ten minute Shakespeare baseball game: “A hit! A hit! A most palpable hit!”A Read-Along Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens an enjoyable, low-cost fund-raiserThe entire original version read by participating audience members, cast as they arrive, and reading from prepared copies, on which assigned sections are highlighted.Three and a half hours with a Victorian dinner break.The Serpent: a Ceremony by Jean-Claude van ItallieThe Book of Genesis and some violent American history combine to make a moral statement.Salomé: a tragedy in one act by Oscar WildeA staged choral presentation, costumes but no scenery.Two On an Emerald Aislea dialect training/performance vehicle – two Irish one-act plays to be selected.